There are few things more valuable in the Bay Area than real estate. In San Francisco, the median home price is already over $2 million. At least seven homes in the city were sold last month $1 million more than the asking priceand buyers regularly offer to pay cash or waive contingencies to stay competitive. However, there is one thing that remains more valuable than a house, and perhaps more valuable than money itself: shares of Anthropic or OpenAI.
Last week 160 Noe Streetan Edwardian house in San Francisco’s desirable Duboce Triangle neighborhood is on the market for $2.9 million, the equivalent of a share of Anthropic or OpenAI, according to the companies’ current valuations. Rachel Swann, the listing agent, says she was inspired to set these unusual terms after meeting several Anthropic employees at an open house for another property. “These people have a lot of paper wealth, but they don’t always have the financial liquidity to do the things they want to do,” Swann says. According to Swann, some of these employees expected to earn as much as $50 million from their shares in Anthropic and wondered if they could utilize that amount as leverage to buy a house. “It came back over and over again.”
Swann’s list is unconventional, but not singular. In April, investment banker Storm Duncan offered to trade his Mill Valley home and adjacent land for Anthropic stock. In May, Vijay Chattha, owner of a PR agency for technology companies, listed his Healdsburg home for $2.5 million, or $2 million for Anthropic stock. “I want to sell my house and I want to invest in Anthropic,” says Chattha. “Why not combine the two?
Chattha’s house— a three-bed, three-bathroom, pool and bocce ball court in a part of Sonoma County adjacent to some of the region’s most famous wineries — also has coveted short-term rental status, allowing the owner to list it on platforms like Airbnb. Only a few properties in Healdsburg have this status only a dozen go on sale in a given year.
Chattha is offering Anthropic employees a $500,000 discount because he believes Anthropic’s stock will grow in value faster than any other investment, and his wine country vacation home is the best bargaining chip he has to try to gain access to them. “If you look at Anthropic’s growth over the last year, it seems crazy,” he says, noting the company’s $380 billion valuation it reported in February. “Now they’re raising $965 billion. That’s three Xs in about three months.” He added that he is open to exchanging his house for shares in Anthropic, but not in OpenAI, because he prefers to utilize Anthropic products.
The real estate listings come at a time when investors are salivating at the record valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI, and even those considered affluent by Bay Area standards are feeling FOMO about the wealth that could result from these companies’ IPOs. (Anthropic filed documents for its initial public offering on Monday; OpenAI is also reportedly preparing to file in the coming months). Despite the unprecedented valuations of these companies, many people believe that their stock prices will only go up and that anyone who gets a piece now can win the jackpot.
People are screaming buy shares of OpenAI and Anthropic on the secondary market, leading to a frenzy of trades that may or may not be legal. As a result, Anthropic has updated its policy surrounding the “unauthorized sale of Anthropic stock” this spring, which noted that “if anyone allegedly sells Anthropic stock without proper board approval, that transaction is void.” Anthropic’s spokesman referred to this policy when asked about the possibility of exchanging the company’s shares for real estate.